Spear of Heaven (7 page)

“He won’t have time for you,” Daruya said. “He’ll be too
busy tearing into me.”

“You both should have thought of that before you colluded in
this escapade,” said Vanyi coldly. Neither had the grace to look abashed.

She pushed herself to her feet. “Well. Enough. Faliad, come
with me. Olenyas, you got her into this, you guard her till she gets out of it.
Me, I’m going to bed. I might even manage to sleep.”

“Sleep well,” they said together. She looked sharply at
them, but neither showed any sign of mockery.

She sighed, considered another spate of advice, left them
instead, without another word. When she glanced back, Daruya was sitting as she
had been for much of their council, cradling her daughter. The Olenyas lay
across the door with his swords clasped to his breast.

“They’ll do,” she said. She was reasonably content, all
things considered.

oOo

Faliad, poor man, looked ready to drop. She sent him to
bed and made sure that he obeyed her. He took the younger Guardian’s cell as
the Sunchildren had taken his own; Vanyi plied him with wine that she found
there, until he fell asleep.

She was weary to exhaustion, but there was no sleep in her.
She wandered through the temple, peering at its strangenesses until they palled
on her. By the time she found the door and opened it on a narrow street, it was
dawn.

No, she thought. Dusk, with the lamps just lit in sconces
along the walls that lined the street. This was the other side of the world,
where day was night, and night, day. There was still light in the sky, but it
faded fast.

The people walking by were not so strange. They were, as
Faliad had said and she knew from her mages’ accounts of their travels in this
land of Merukarion, as much like plainsmen of the Hundred Realms as made no
matter. There were differences, but those were small: shorter stature, broader
build, lighter skin—and yes, one or two even of the few she saw here had hair
the color of copper. The rest were dark, of course, or grey with age.

They were like Asanians in that they did not stare, except
sidelong, under lowered eyelids. She was not dressed as they were, and her skin
was white—white as a bone, they said in the empire. Her hair had been red once,
but not the red of copper; a darker color by far, like moors in autumn, with
brown lights and gold. Now it was all gone to ash.

She leaned against the doorpost and watched the people pass.
No hatred touched her, and no fear. Wariness, that was all, and a veiled
curiosity, a whisper of thought: T
here’s
another strange one in Shakryan’s temple. I wonder how they conjured it up? Is
it a ghost? A ghoul?
A shiver at that, but of the more pleasant sort. But
then, as the thinker came level, disappointment.
Only an old woman. Poor thing, she has a disease. It took all the color
out of her.

Vanyi laughed at that, but silently, drawing back into the
shadow of the doorway lest she alarm the passersby. Northerners used to think
that of her, too, even when she was young. Even Estarion had, at first:
Estarion with his black-velvet skin and his black-velvet voice and his
astonishing eyes.

“Damn,” she said aloud, as she always did when she could not
get him out of her head.

And there he was in it, as if she had invoked him: spitting
mad, she noted, and yes, as the Olenyas had predicted, he had a glorious
headache. Not one bit of him was muted by coming from half around the world.

She let him rage himself to a standstill. She could, if she
put her mind to it, see him where he was, still in the Guildhall, with the sun
shining through the high windows of her own morning-room. They must have taken
him there after the Gate collapsed: he was sitting on the couch she liked to
nap on, stripped to breeches, his hair worked out of its plait, and a gaggle of
mages and priests hovering, looking frantic.

He took no notice of them at all. His eyes glared straight
into hers. She heard his voice as if he stood in front of her. “Damn you,” he
said. His tone by now was almost reasonable. “Damn you, Vanyi. You’ve got both
my heirs on your side of the world. And I can’t get there. My way is no more
open than yours is.” He flung up his hand, a flash of gold. “It’s locked tight
shut.”

“I know,” said Vanyi. “Your elder heir said as much.
Eloquently.”

His eyes glittered. “And the younger? What did she say?

“No,” he said quickly, before Vanyi could answer, “don’t
bother. I don’t want to know.”

“Believe me,” Vanyi said after a pause, “if I could send
them back, I would. Were you the one who taught them the shadow-trick? Even the
baby’s mastered it.”

“
No!
” That much
vehemence was too much for him: he winced and clutched his head. “God,” he said
much more softly. “Goddess. What a ghastly mess this is.”

“It would be worse,” she said, “if Daruya hadn’t been there
to keep the road steady till we could all get past it. She’s worthy of her
training, Starion.”

“If her training had been adequate, she wouldn’t have gone
at all.”

“Granted,” said Vanyi, silencing him before he could go off
in another rage. “I’ll undertake to complete it as I can.”

“Has she left anyone a choice in the matter?”

He was wry, which was reassuring: it meant that he was
getting his temper back in hand. He ran shaking fingers through his hair,
pulling out the last of the plait.

Vanyi regarded him in something resembling sympathy. “We can
still talk,” she said. “That’s not so ill.”

“But I can’t
be
there.” He leaped to his feet, scattering priests and mages, and paced out his
frustration. “If we muster all our power, ward it with all our strength, then
raise another Gate—this time let me go through it. If the Gate alone isn’t
enough, the
Kasar
may be—”

She stopped him before he could go any further. “You will
not! I don’t even dare raise one here. It’s deadly, Starion. And don’t tell me
how strong you are,” she said, as he opened his mouth. “I know it to the last
drop of power. It might be enough. But it might not. We can’t have the emperor
dead, no matter where his heirs are, or how long it will take them to get back
unless we raise the Gates again.”

He was looking fully as rebellious as Daruya, and about as
young. But he had more sense, or more cynicism. The rebellion faded from his
face. He raised his hands, sighed. “Hells take you for being right. I’ll go mad
here, waiting.”

“Of course you won’t,” she said briskly. “You’ll be too
busy. Isn’t today your judgment-day? You must be late already.”

“I put it off,” he snapped. Good, she thought: he was
thinking, even with his temper as chancy as it was. “See here, Vanyi. We’ve got
to do something.”

“And so I shall,” she said. “I’m going over the mountains,
just as I planned to. Do think, next time you want to talk to me. The people
here are sure I’m a lunatic, or a god’s plaything.”

“Wise people,” said Estarion. “Vanyi, you’re not—”

“I have to go,” she said.

Even as he began his protests, she cut him off, raised the
shields about her mind, withdrew into the temple, in the dimness and the
strangeness and the scent of incense. Someone was chanting. The younger
Guardian? Or did they keep a priest or two here, to preserve their pretense of
holiness?

She was too tired to hunt down the voice and ask. She could,
in fact, have slept where she stood. Speaking across the world was harder than
it looked while one did it.

She found a bed, it little mattered where, and fell into it,
clothes and all. Not even fear could keep her awake, nor her creaking bones,
nor grief for the mages whom she had lost. She laid them all on the breast of
Lady Night, and herself with them. If she had dreams, she remembered none of
them, till it was morning again, and fear and pain and grief were locked once
more about her neck.

Vanyi thrust aside the remnants of breakfast, unrolling
the map that Faliad had brought for her, anchoring it with cups and bowls and a
jug half-full of the local ale. The others—all of them, mages and Olenyai and
Sunchildren—craned as best they could, to see what was drawn on the fine
parchment.

She ignored them. “So,” she said. “Here we are, out on the
western edge of Merukarion—Su-Akar, we should be calling it, I suppose. This is
the town called Kianat, and here are the mountains that are only foothills.
What’s this?” She peered. “‘Here be demons’?”

The younger Guardian of the fallen Gate, whose name was
Talian, spoke quickly. “There are, truly. The mountains are full of them. They
haunt the peaks, and lure travelers astray.”

Vanyi shot her a glance. She was flushing under the sallow
bronze of her skin and wishing transparently that Faliad were here to spare her
the ordeal. But the elder Guardian, having slept little if at all, was standing
watch in the outer temple.

Vanyi decided to have mercy on this younger fool. “Ah well,
we’re mages. We’ll raise the wards and chant the spells and keep the demons at
bay.”

“Lady,” said Talian with shaky determination, “you may
smile, but this isn’t our own country. It shares a world and a sun with us,
yes—but it’s as alien as any world on the far side of Gates.”

“That’s well enough put,” said Vanyi, unperturbed by the
girl’s presumption. She turned back to the map. “So. Demons in the mountains.
There’s a pass, this says, that seneldi can cross. Yes?”

“In this season,” Talian said with a little less
trepidation, “lady, yes. You won’t want to delay too long, or go too slow. The
snows close in early at those heights.”

“There really are no seneldi here?” asked one of the Olenyai.

“Really,” said Talian. “They have a kind of ox that draws
their wagons, but no swift riding animal.”

“Then how do they wage their wars?”

“On foot,” Chakan answered for the Guardian, “and well
enough for that, I’m sure. Our traders, once it’s safe for them to come here,
should make a great profit from the sale of seneldi. A whole new realm, empty
of them. Remarkable.”

“It is strange,” Talian agreed, “like everything else here.
They don’t have mages, either.”

“Everyone has mages,” said Vanyi. “How can they help it?
Even where there’s no Guild to teach the spells, mages are born, and grow up to
wield the lightnings.”

“There are none here,” said Talian.

“None that anyone will admit to, you’re saying.” Vanyi
frowned at the map. “Suppression, then. Witch-hunts, I’d wager. Children
disposed of when they begin to show the gifts.”

“It could be, lady,” Talian said. “They are afraid of magic;
they won’t talk about it, or let it be mentioned.”

“It took mages to break the Gates,” said Vanyi.

“But need they have been native mages?” Chakan met her glare
with limpid eyes. “Consider, lady. Between the Mageguild and the priesthood of
god and goddess, our part of the world has made magery a known and regimented
thing. We take it for granted. Here in Merukarion, how do we know what’s common
and what’s not? The gift might not appear here, for whatever reason. If there
are mages, who’s to say they’re not renegades of our own country, who hate the
Guild and mean to break it as they can?”

“Possible,” said Vanyi. “But my bones don’t think so. They
tell me it’s something else, something that comes out of here.” Her finger
tapped the map where it marked the kingdom of Shurakan. “Tell me about the
Kingdom of Heaven.”

The Guardian looked briefly rebellious, as if she wanted to
remind the Guildmaster that she had been told everything that anyone knew. But
she controlled herself. Maybe she reflected that everyone here might not have
shared the counsels of the Guild, and that they should know what they
confronted before they went out to face it.

“The Kingdom of Heaven,” she said after a pause, in the tone
of one teaching a lesson to a circle of intelligent children, “is called
Su-Shaklan in their language. Our tongues are more comfortable calling it
Shurakan. It keeps to itself, people say here, to the point that while it
permits foreigners to pass its guarded gates, it does so only on sufferance,
and never allows them to stay past a certain fixed term. That varies according
to the purpose for which the strangers come. Ambassadors may linger a season;
two, if they come too near the winter, when the passes are shut and the mountains
impenetrable till spring.”

“Why are they so wary?” asked Chakan. “Have they had enemies
so bitter that they fear all strangers?”

“I think not,” Vanyi said. “Consider where they are. Here
are the mountains, so high they touch the sky—there’s no air to breathe, it’s
said, and anyone who climbs so high, unless he’s a mage and spell-guarded, will
die. And they have no mages, we’re told. And here’s their kingdom, a valley no
larger than a barony in our empire, and a small one at that. It’s green, warm,
rich, everything that’s blessed, and more so after the barrenness of the
mountains. They’ve made themselves a haven, difficult to reach, small enough to
crowd quickly. Strangers would be rare there, but when they came, they’d
threaten to strain the little space, and drive its people out by simple force
of numbers.”

“And,” said Talian, “their minds are walled as high as their
country. They’re afraid of new things, strange things. Their kingdom is
old—ancient, they say—and set in its ways. And they fear and hate magic. Their
first rulers were a god’s children, king and queen, brother and sister, who
fled some calamity that had to do with magic, and led their people to the
valley, and set up a kingdom that would be forever free of the taint. The word
for magic in their language is the word for evil, and for the excrement of
their oxen.”

The mages were appalled. Chakan laughed.

He caught Vanyi’s eye and sobered, if only a little. “Well,
Guildmaster. There’s your reason for the breaking of Gates, however they went
about it. How in the million worlds did they let one be set up there at all?”